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Inspired by the idea of the wunderkammer—“wonder-room” or “cabinet of curiosities”—that originated during the Renaissance, world-renowned architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien invited 35 celebrated architects and designers from around the world to create their own wunderkammers, filling boxes with objects that inspire them. This delightful book gathers together the varied, evocative wunderkammers along with accompanying statements by their architect-creators, including such luminaries as Shigeru Ban, Toyo Ito, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Peter Eisenman, Steven Holl, Richard Meier, Murray Moss, Diébédo Francis Keré, Juhani Pallasmaa, Elias Torres, and Peter Zumthor. An introduction by Williams and Tsien explains their fascination with the wunderkammer and looks at their own history of collecting. The boxes, each spotlighted in its own section, are explored through each architect’s essay; working drawings and sketchbook pages; construction and installation photos; a list of the items contained; and a photograph of the final box. Wunderkammer offers a new way to think about art and inventiveness, collection and meaning in everyday objects.
Hardcover: 240 pages
Publisher: Yale University Press (December 10, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0300197985
ISBN-13: 978-0300197983
Product Dimensions: 6.2 x 0.8 x 8.7 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #349,450 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #18 in Books > Arts & Photography > Other Media > Installations #153 in Books > Arts & Photography > Sculpture > Appreciation #378 in Books > Arts & Photography > Architecture > Individual Architects & Firms
Williams - Tsien generous idea of including friends, mentors and followers - most famous, some obscure - in their own project in a newly discovered building, or so they say. Starchitects are so pressed to produce intelligent contributions for so many different public showings, from cook books to ersatz collections that I'm amazed they can still submit something intelligent/ intelligible. I have to admit I am always curious of what these bright busy people can put together. Well, the case is that some submissions are simple and down to the point, some are far out and clueless. The book shows them in supposedly clear way which somehow got indecipherable. Some are a strarchitec ego trip, some about their own heroes and mentors, like a box within a box within a box. Apart from a familiar USA lineup, there's also great guys like Bijoy Jain, Diller, Scofidio, Renfro, Juhani Pallasmaa, Murcutt, Martinez Lapeña y Torres, but who's Luce? and Iino? Like the insight this filling of a box implies, the submissions are mostly very intimate, private. It's another peep show....
Open-hearted, often funny, generally playful and pursued in the spirit of curiosity, the boxes of Tsien and Williams's Wunderkammer project for the Venice Biennale are themselves collected in this book. Even the book's trim size is reminiscent of the box shape each architect/artist/collector was given to work with. It's a variation on a theme of creative minds, and each contribution is presented both as final outcome and in process shots and sketches. Memento mori, portals of identity, poetic expressions of self, the sensory, textural, imaginative, the intimate, or the made, the boxes show the artist's fixation--Luce's lifelong exploration of "beauty," Mayer's reworking of movement and schemes of previous projects, Baird's or Ito's touchstones, for example--or show the well-practiced compulsion to rework space, whether through reconstruction, control of light, or near performance. Each gives, if one sets aside presumptions and expectations, and gives, perhaps, in a more lasting way than would have been possible on site.
Very interesting and very interestingly packaged!
Wunderkammer
